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Psychology essay on lies
Psychology essays about lying
Psychology essays about lying
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Lying is all around us; it never stops, every few minutes another lie is being said. It can either benefit everyone, or it can turn out for the worse. Lying is easily influenced among adolescents, as children, parents have always taught their kids that lying is a horrible habit and should not be encouraged, As the children grow up, they learn from everyone around them, and can’t help but start to lie, making lying no longer a bad habit because they witness the lies that are coming out of everyone’s mouth. There are two main types of lies, there’s the occasional white lie that doesn’t seem as bad. Also, there’s the severe lie that hurts the person that was lied to.
A lie is a lie, doesn’t matter if it’s a little white lie or a severe lie, it still ends up hurting everyone’s feelings. People lie for several reasons, but the main reason is, pressure, pressure that is being pushed upon
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Friends only want what’s best for you, just like parents. They are there for you through thick and thin. They can cover for you when you do something bad, they tell you how good you look when you don’t feel “Hot.” The famous line known by everyone, “It looks okay.” When what’s they’re really going saying in their mind is “Didn’t you wear that not to long ago?” If it makes you feel better and you feel comfortable to wear that, they will tell you that it looks good. Of course, everyone will probably notice, depending if they are very detailed and notice. After, when it is brought to the friend the other person they lied to attention, the wonder if you did that intentionally, when all you wanted to do is make them feel better about their outfit. Just because you had good intentions doesn’t exactly mean that they’ll forgive you for telling them something that never was the truth. The result of the situation is that you are now identified as a liar, or in this case a bad
In the beginning of “The Ways we Lie”, Ericsson begins by lying to the bank, her client, and even her partner. What would have happened if she had decided to tell the truth? Well Ericsson tried going a week without lying and this is what happened, “The bank charges me $60 in overdraft fees, my partner keels over when I tell him about my travails, my client fire me for telling her I didn’t feel like being on time, and my friend takes it personally when I say I’m not hungry” (Ericsson). The truth is being honest can hurt just as badly as telling a lie. Ericsson lists several ways that people lie, “The White Lie, Facades, Ignoring the Plain Facts, Deflecting, Omission, Stereotypes and Clichés, Groupthink, Out-and-Out Lies, Dismissal, Delusion” which are just a few ways that we lie. Ericsson successfully makes her case, “Sure I lie, but it doesn’t hurt anything. Or does it”. By incorporating personal experiences in her essay, which she demonstrates moments where she has been a liar and a candid person her audience is able to accept reality. Yes lying is bad of course it is, but “We lie. We all do” whether it hurts someone or not is simply a matter of how it’s being told. As Ericsson confirmed through her one week of honesty, “it’s not easy to eliminate lying completely from our
Lying is bad but the fear that can come from it is worse. Fear can rule a person which drives them to extreme and irrational acts that can shape society in a negative way. We as people are so accustomed to how we should act that during times of fear and crisis our vision is blurred and sometimes our decision making abilities are impaired. We often look past at how much fear can affect us and our society. Starting from Salem 1692 and going to the McCarthy era fear ruled the people and even now in present time America we are constantly living in fear.
Although it is considered wrong to tell lies, it seems that literature has offered us situations where telling lies isn’t necessarily bad. Of course, lying often has a tragic outcome, but not always for the person or people who told the lie or lies. Oftentimes, these unfortunate outcomes are directed at the person about whom the lie was told. Furthermore, these stories have explained that dishonesty can result in success for both the liar and the target. Maybe we have been teaching the wrong values to our children.
White lies are usually used to prevent the hurting of someone’s feelings. In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Christopher’s father uses white lies to deceive Christopher without establishing more questions about Christopher’s mother's flee. In everyday life, people lie extremely often, causing it to be difficult to tell when someone is actually lying. According to Pamela Meyer, “Lying's complex. It's woven into the fabric of our daily and our business lives. We're deeply ambivalent about the truth...We're against lying, but we're covertly for it in ways that our society has sanctioned for centuries and centuries and centuries. It's as old as breathing. It's part of our culture, it's part of our history.”(Meyer 4:59) In fact, the reason behind Christopher believing his father’s lies is because they are familiar in a way. Ed lies to Christopher, because of habit more than to protect anyone. Although, Christopher’s father used mostly white lies to protect Christopher from the harsh truth, he does it because of the emotion that goes along with them. Even though Christopher has a difficult time showing emotion he becomes upset. According to Paul Ekman in Lying and Deception, “Lies are also betrayed by signs of emotions. The simplest case is one in which the liar attempts to convincingly fabricate an emotion that is not felt. Few people are very good at this, although most of the time people get away
The society that we live in today is built around lies. Banks lying to customers in order to feed the capitalist mindset, politicians lying to citizens in order to gain power, and charities taking donations with open arms however are stingy when giving back to the cause. The common reason why these organizations lie is to hide what they truly are. People also deceive others in order to hide who they truly are. From a young age, lying becomes engraved into one’s mind, we are taught to walk, talk, and lie.
Stephanie Ericsson’s The Ways We Lie, analyzes and reflects on how lying has simply become the norm in our society. We all lie, there is not one person in the world that does not lie. Most people lie because they are afraid of telling the truth, however what they do not know is telling a lie can lead them in the wrong direction because many things can happen when lying to a person. The person can find out when everything unravels that person will not have trust in you and you would be known as a liar. To every action there is a consequence, so why not deal with just one consequence when telling the
In “The Ways We Lie” by Stephanie Ericsson, the author uses her knowledge to talk about the different ways of lies and how those lies affect the liar, as well as the people who had been told lies. According to the author’s essay, there are 10 types of lies that people encounter every single day: the White Lie, Facades, Ignoring the Plain Facts, Deflecting, Omission, Stereotypes and Cliches, Groupthink, Out-and-Out Lies, Dismissal, and Delusion. Throughout the essay, it is connoted that people are lying in various ways even though they are not intended to. I had been taught that lying is a bad habit. According to Ericsson, there are many types of lie and I did three of them in my life: the White Lie, Omission, and Out-and-Out Lies; however, I can defend my lies for good purposes.
Author Allison Kornet in her article (1997) “The Truth about Lying: Has Lying Gotten a Bad Rap” states that deception or lying has become a part of everyone’s life. A person lies or deceives as often as he brushes his teeth or combs his hair. Many psychologists have neglected or ignored the concept of deception or lying and its effects on everyone’s life. Kornet explains that in the previous two to three decades, the psychologists started noticing or analyzing the effects of a person’s deception on others or why a person lies so many times in his day-to-day life. The person might learn lying from childhood
The article, “Is Lying Bad for Us,” accurately describes the intentions of a “liar.” The author says, “Though liars do not tell the truth, they care about it, while the bullshitter does not even care about the truth and seeks merely to impress” (Gunderman). This statement proves that lying should not be viewed as out of the ordinary, or unacceptable, and that liars should not be viewed as bad people. Lying can be shown as a way of protecting or caring
What are lies? A lie is defined as follows: To make a statement that one knows to be false, especially with the intent to deceive. There are several ways that lies are told for instance, there are white lies, lies of omission, bold faced lies, and lies of exaggeration. No matter what type of lie that one chooses to tell many people believe that lies do more harm than good.
We lie all the time, lying is not something new to our culture. We lie to our parents, we lie to our friends, we even lie to our significant other, but why do we do it? There is not one set reason on why we lie but they can vary from an insignificant reason to something more nefarious. A good operational definition of a lie is “A lie is a false statement to a person or group made by another person or group who knows it is not the whole truth, intentionally.” (Freitas-Magalhães) We have been raised to know that lying is usually a bad thing, and it’s better to tell the truth, not to mention the circumstances get exponentially worse if you are caught lying. No one wants to be labeled as a liar, or untrustworthy. This may sound unorthodox but I personally think lying is perfectly fine; depending on the situation. If you have a prima-facie duty to be dishonest it’s perfectly acceptable. Ross says a prima facie duty or obligation is an actual duty. “One’s actual duty is what one ought to do all things considered.” (Carson) I’m not the only one who finds this too be true. Ross would also agree with me, He says “Lying is permissible or obligatory when the duty not to lie conflicts with a more important or equal important prima facie duty.” (Carson) As I was doing research on this topic I did read one extremely compelling argument on why we ought not to lie. Aristotle basically said a person who makes a defense for lying could never be trusted. (King.)
Can you remember the last time someone lied to you? Or how about the last time you lied to someone else? Did you ever stop and ask yourself why? There are so many different reasons that a person might lie. Maybe a lie about something to keep oneself out of trouble, or even a lie to impress other people. But either way there are always going to be serious consequences or effects of lying.
To begin, sometimes it is better to lie rather than telling the truth and hurting someone’s feelings. It is not wrong when you tell a little white lie to keep someone you care about from getting hurt. To be specific, if your friend asked you how you feel about her hair, and you do not like it, you would not want to tell her that. Instead of telling the truth, and hurting her fragile feelings, you would rather say a little lie, telling her that you love it. If you are lying to keep someone you care about from getting their feelings hurt, or their pride wounded, then what is the harm? In conclusion, there is nothing wrong with telling small lies, if you are doing it with someone’s best interest in mind.
First, lying is an aggressively debated topic, and most people believe that lying can be good or bad depending on the situation.
This sort of lie is known as a white lie. White lies are accepted by the public since they are useful for everyone who needs to hear one. Little white lies are frequently overlooked. The general public tells such a significant number of white lies they scarcely perceive themselves as lying at all. For instance, white lies incorporate telling others they are fine (when they are not), they like somebody's hair (when they honestly do not), and so on. These lies build up, one on top of another, making a slippery slope. Once individuals disclose to themselves these lies are innocuous, telling larger lies becomes plainly